Rob Alt hopes next year you'll skip the cherry blossom tour in the nation's capital. Instead, he wants you to enjoy the same type of celebration closer to home.

"We're a year round town. My goal is to see if we can host major events every other week," said Alt, Elkton's mayor. "St. Patrick's week was wonderful." And now his plan is to make early to mid-April a target time to be in Elkton's downtown. The attraction, he hopes, will be cherry blossoms. A number of trees have been removed from the area surrounding Elkton's municipal building on Railroad Avenue and North Street. The trees were taken out because they were touching overhead wires and buckling the sidewalk. Now tree boxes are being built and eight foot cherry blossom trees are being planted. "We will have at least 20 trees through here," said Alt. "Anywhere there is a tree that needs to be replaced it will be a cherry blossom." It sounds like an expensive plan but it's not. Alt said there is plenty of money that has been set aside to pay for the trees. The town has a years old reforestation fund which builders have paid into for years. That fund is now paying for the cherry blossoms. "We have tens of thousands in that fund," said Alt. He said that if all goes as planned, next year there will be activities focused around the new trees. In other news from the Town of Elkton: • Alt reported that the town won three awards at a Tourism Breakfast. One of the awards was for the First Friday celebrations, one was for the Elkton Alliance Main Street projects, and Minihane's was named Business of the Year.